Coal-fired Brooklyn-style pizza from a New York-based chain fits in well with Uptown’s West Village scene. There’s a façade of authenticity propped up by an afternoon stoking each day, black and white stills of big city icons, red checkered tablecloths, and other such scaffolding. Atmosphere matters more than food in the contrived development setting, after all—that and sweet, colorful cocktails.

The setting allows shallow Uptown types to play their see-and-be-seen role while posturing with assumed knowledge of coal-fired ovens and Brooklyn pizza. For the restaurant, it allows a similarly slack-jawed approach. Pies reach beyond mediocrity, but no further. The crust can turn out neatly charred with bittersweet highlights. Just as often, however, it’s an indifferent mass topped sloppily with over-herbed sauce, watery mozzarella, and aggressive meats. Most of their pies fall somewhere in between: decent enough, though suffering from little balance or execution problems.